Taika Waititi and New Zealand Transport Agency have come up with a world-first Snapchat campaign about the dangers of driving stoned.

For the past month the NZ Transport Agency has been working with US-based Snapchat on an innovative campaign targeting young New Zealand drug users to raise awareness of the dangers of driving while under the influence of marijuana.

“Drug driving is serious and a growing problem with young drivers in New Zealand and around the world. The problem is that many of these guys don’t want to hear that what they’re doing is dangerous, and they’re experts at tuning out conventional advertising messages,” says Transport Agency spokesperson Andy Knackstedt.

“Our research tells us that many of these drivers actually think they’re safer when driving stoned, because they slow down. But that’s the problem – they may be driving slower, but their reaction times are also a lot slower, and that’s what leads to crashes.”

A new approach was needed to reach an audience that doesn’t want to be reached, so in a world-first for a road safety campaign, the Transport Agency teamed up with Snapchat to set up and seed ‘Tinnyvision’, an account fronted by a likeable group of young Kiwis.

The Transport Agency worked with local website owners to spread the word about TinnyVision and generate interest in the funny ‘stoner snaps’. As the word spread, thousands added TinnyVision as a friend on Snapchat, then over the course of a single day they received a series of video snaps, watching the stars of TinnyVision getting stoned and watching their reactions get slower. After ten snaps the boys head out in the car for some food – the driver reacts too slowly and hits a girl at a pedestrian crossing.

At this point the audience doesn’t know what they’ve just seen, but it looks real and they can’t watch it again – that’s the nature of Snapchat. A few minutes later they get the final snap with the simple written message ‘Stoned drivers are slower to react’.

The video snaps for the campaign were directed by Taika Waititi (Boy, Eagle vs Shark), who also filmed the Transport Agency’s award-winning Blazed drug-driving television advertisements which set records on YouTube and has clocked up more than two million views on-line.

The Snapchat campaign has now achieved its initial goal of reaching 7,500 people, and 95% of those have watched the full series of snaps and received the road safety message at the end. Commentary on social media has been overwhelmingly positive, with thousands of likes and hundreds of positive comments.

The Tinnyvision snaps are now being packaged together to be used for cinema advertising and promotion on YouTube from next week.

source and more: Scoop
Two more articles on this on Stuff.co.nz and NZ Herald

If you would like to experience the campaign for yourself, go to Snapchat and sign up to follow ‘tinnyvision’.